Sunday, January 22, 2012

Holier Than Thou - 16 Satmar Rabbanim Ban Frum Magazines

16 Williamsburg rabbis, all of them members of the R. Zalman Leib faction within the Satmar hassidut, signed a letter banning three popular frum magazines: Mishpacha, Ami and Binah (which - as the ban points out - is published by Hamodia). Below is a copy of the ban.

This ban which also includes Mishpacha magazine, has no connection to the Israeli ban on Mishpacha a few weeks ago. Rather, this comes after Ami magazine published an article in which they portrayed the Eideh Hacharedis as moderates who are under siege be extremists, and the recent extremists acts in Bet Shemesh and elsewhere do not really represent their true values. While Ami subsequently published a retraction in which they wrote that they were requested by the Gaavad of the Eideh Hacherdis to publicize that no one is authorized to speak in his - or his organization's - name, and that it seems that some of the acts by the extremists were actually justified and do represent the true values of the Eideh Hacharedis, the extremists in Williamsburg decided that Ami magazine is too liberal for them and therefore a campaign against it was launched. I guess the rabbis decided that since we're already banning, we might ban some others too, so they banned Mishpacha and Binah too.

According to this poster (from here) that hung in all Satmar (R. ZL's) Shuls in Williamsburg, 29 groceries have signed themselves up to obey the ban - at least partially, as the Binah magazine was still sold by most groceries on the list. The Muslim-owned newsstand on the outskirts of Williamsburg reported that early Friday morning he was out of stock of Ami.

8 comments:

Out of the 29 groceries listed on this poster, only one had been selling the Ami magazine. And that one is still selling it under-the-counter. This poster is designed to exert pressure on those who do sell it, and create an impression that this is a serious controversy.

The ban was originally meant to be issued on Ami only, but was in the last minute widened to cover all magazines in the English language.

So what is the motive behind this Ami ban? Well, in the last two days, emails between Ami and R’ Zalmen Leib’s PR agents surfaced (presumably leaked by Ami in response to the ban). The emails show clearly that Ami was threatened that he will be crushed because they were unhappy with the coverage they were receiving from Ami.

The link below shows a montage of those emails. R’ Z”l’s agent’s grievances and threats are in red; Ami’s responses are in blue.

it is very sad, indeed. i dont read any of these magazines, because i'm unfortunately no longer chassidic. the reason behind my choosing a different lifestyle was because of rabbonim like these, who are a bunch of hypocrites. did they speak up when zali fought his older brother and refused to go to a din torah? did they ban him? of course not because they would lose their jobs, or perhaps even their lives. magazines are however an easy target. let them take their bans and shove it up their azzez.

This is a ban generation. I can't wait until I'm banned. My wife and kids will have to leave me and I'll be FREE to read whatever I like. Trust me though, I won't read any of of these mags. I'll read Der Yid for its venom, and People Magazine for its photos.

Can you believe it, another ban??? Why doesn't anyone ban these outrageous banners who are sitting and doing nothing for society?That is other than issuing these outrageous bans. Sharia Law will be implemented next. Get out the suicide bombers. And BOMB instead of ------- BAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE: there is no new ban against ami. just one against all the magazines for the zalis. the zalis are supposed to read only der yid, just in case somebody says some good things about the other rebbe